Once upon a time I signed up for a newspaper, the London Daily News, dreamed up by Robert Maxwell ("dreamed" being the operative word). As a result, I spent most of the next year on a project that seemed to be relaunched every half-hour. First it was going to be an evening paper, then the big man decided, apparently on a whim, that it would be Britain's first 24-hour newspaper. (Whatever that was supposed to mean. I don't think Maxwell himself really understood either.) No one among the editors or the executives ever seemed to have a clear idea what we were supposed to be doing.
You won't be surprised to hear that the paper folded soon after the launch.
Having survived that gruelling experience, I'm not hitting the panic button after the first few days of Open Source Media. I thought the site looked neat on the opening day, but the more visits I pay, the more obvious it is that major tweaking is in order. The news coverage lacks verve, and it just isn't easy to navigate the blog content. (As editorial board member David Corn has already gone public on all this, I assume the rest of us are allowed to pitch in.)
OSM Member Laurence Simon offers suggestions too. As does non-member Jeff Jarvis.
One thing I'd like (although I see that JJ disagrees) is a broader range of political opinions. (Roger Simon told me last week he's still negotiating with a number of left-wing bloggers.) The echo-chamber effect is a constant danger. I think we saw it at full force in the hysterical reaction to the French riots; the blogworld came close to making a fool of itself on that particular story. (Here's some advice for American bloggers: don't overdose on the "Europe-is-finished" rhetoric. It makes good copy, but the reality is a lot more complicated.)
Of course, it would help if there were more European bloggers. This Online Journalism Review piece by Paul Berger takes a look at why the UK scene has yet to begin to compete with America's. Tim Worstall has a view as well.
UPDATE: On a more positive note, I can't help quoting from Neo's account of last week's NY bash. Yes, I know, she was very nice about me elsewhere in the post, but that's not the point. Honest:
I find it an extraordinary experience to meet people backwards: that is, to meet their minds first and their bodies second. You get to know people in a totally different way as, day after day, you read what they are thinking without ever having met them in the flesh.
That sums it up for me.
I agree with you that the navigation is quite bad. I could not even find an RSS feed on the main page! You would think that bloggers would know that their readership will not tolerate a site without feeds.
At this point I'm not sure I see the benefit that OSM brings on top of the existing feeds I already have from the participants. A good way to leverage the exisiting content would have been to repurpose the feeds of all the contributors using a consistent folksonomy and allow readers to subscribe to specific tags.
Just my 2 cents...
Posted by: Franck | Monday, November 21, 2005 at 06:03 PM